


Dreaming

by Zaffie



Series: The Fateful Janitor's Closet [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: But Now The Issues Are Mostly Skye's, But Yeah It's There, F/M, Gen, If You Still Need Tags To Know What This Story Is About Then You Are Doing It Wrong, In Fact It's Mostly Mental Torture, It's Not Graphic Torture, Let's be honest, Look Tagging Properly Will Spoil The Story, My God These Tags Are Appalling, Oh Right I Forgot There's A Little Bit Of Torture, Or Will They, Raina Is Creepy, Skye And Ward Continue To Have Issues, Skye Is A Little Bit Scared, Team Will Save The Day, This Is The Third In A Series Okay, Time For Him To Die Now, Which Is All Garrett's Fault, but yay, just read it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-01-25 00:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1622453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaffie/pseuds/Zaffie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So, I sort of wanted to provide some kind of drawing of my envisioning of the Playground, but I am just SO BAD at drawing, even my appalling MS Paint version was no good. I can't wait until someone invents a form of mind-melding in which I can take the image from my head and put it straight into yours - but since that hasn't happened yet, you'll have to make do with your own imagination. Sorry! :D</p><p>The measurement from the ground floor to the first bridges is given in feet because Skye is the one narrating. It's about 2.4 metres, if you're Aussie like me. I actually could not conceieve a reasonable distance from a ground floor to a first level, so I ended up marching around my house with a tape measure and working out the average ceiling height. Let no one ever say I do things by halves.</p>
        </blockquote>





	1. Basic Needs

Skye is naked. She’s cold, and she’s kneeling in the tub, and there’s a hand firmly wound into her hair at the back of her head.

     “Are you ready yet?” Garrett asks her.

     Skye doesn’t say ‘Ready for what?’ like she had done the first few times. She doesn’t sneer at him, or try to explain that she _can’t_ have powers, that she _doesn’t_ know anything. She just sits, and then he plunges her face back into the water of the tub.

     It’s freezing. Skye’s mouth opens as she’s forced in, a gasp reflex against the cold, and air spirals out of her. She closes her mouth again, spits the water out, opens her eyes. They burn underwater, but it makes her feel calmer. She can see her hair, floating around her like dark seaweed. She doesn’t struggle, or panic, because she’s learnt by now that fighting makes it worse.

     Garrett hauls her up, out of the water. Skye’s hair falls like a curtain in front of her face, plastered to her mouth, and for a few seconds she’s breathing water.

     “Are you ready yet?” Garrett asks again. “Show me what you can do.”

     Skye breathes deep, trying to filter as much air back into her blood as possible before…

     He forces her under again.

     It’s calm, under here, beneath the water. Skye watches her hair. She watches the bubbles. She blinks and she tries to make her mind blank, make her face blank.

     Garrett lifts her. Skye’s hair is plastered to her face, to her neck, except for the handful that he is gripping.

     “I think that’s enough for today,” he says, and he releases Skye’s hair and wipes his hand off and laughs. “We’ll play again soon.”

     It’s Raina who helps Skye to her feet, pushes her hair out of her face and drapes a towel around her shoulders. Skye is shivering and freezing. Water streams down her face and hair. For a few seconds, she’s too shocked and cold to move. Her nose burns from inhaling water. Her eyes sting. She doesn’t move, she just lets the towel and Raina’s arms wrap around her.

     After a little while, Skye regains herself. She grips the towel firmly and she steps back, away from Raina. She forces her face to go slack, her eyes to go blank and dead instead of wide and stunned.

     “Come on,” Raina murmurs. “It’s okay.” She puts an arm around Skye’s waist and leads Skye out of the room, down the corridor and into a bathroom, warm and cosy with mats on the floor. Skye watches as Raina turns the taps on the shower, and then she drops the towel and steps inside.

     The water of the shower is luke-warm and there’s a weird smell, but it isn’t freezing and there is shampoo and conditioner and bodywash in the corner, so Skye welcomes it. She uncaps the shampoo and squeezes it into her hand, massages it through her hair.

     They’re trying to destroy her mind. Skye knows it. She’s seen Hanna so many times over the past – days? Weeks? Months, even? They’ve shown her the body of her baby girl, contorted and bleeding and broken. She never knows when it’s real; never knows if this time she won’t wake up. It’s hell, not knowing; not about Hanna, not about the rest of her team, not about the world outside.

     Skye is determined to hold on to her mind. She forces herself to ignore it all, everything they do to her – she reminds herself that Raina is evil, even when she’s nice, that Garrett is a skilled manipulator and a compulsive liar. It’s times like now, in the shower, that she has time to focus. She stares at the white tiles and keeps a picture of Hanna in her mind – perfect, beautiful Hanna. Hanna in Jemma’s arms, Hanna in Natasha’s arms. They will take care of her baby. She’s sure of it.

     Conditioner pours through Skye’s fingers and she rinses her hair out as it hangs heavy down her back. She remembers showering with Hanna, and it feels so long ago now. Water drips from Skye’s eyelids onto the tiled floor.

     She could stay in this shower forever; she could try. But Garrett would come, and his methods of manipulation aren’t the same as Raina’s. He’s not gentle. He’s not _sane_.

     Skye twists off the taps. She pushes open the door of the shower and steps out and lets Raina wrap a towel around her again. She clutches it to her shoulders and stares at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She’s pale, she’s bleeding, her eyes are huge and dark and her eyelashes clump together with water. She looks young, and vulnerable. Her lips are red in her white face.

     “You’ll be okay,” Raina smiles. “You’re all cleaned up, so let’s get you back to your room.”

     Skye wonders why they speak to her like she’s a child. She lets herself be led through the twists and turns of the rabbit warren that is Hydra’s new base, and then Raina opens a door and pushes Skye through and she’s back in her room. It’s grey, small and grey, with a concrete floor that is cold against her bare feet.

     “Get dressed quickly,” Raina tells her, and then she backs out and closes the door behind her.

     Skye dresses on autopilot. She wonders, about the clothes. Why are they here? Every day, new clothes in her size appear, and she doesn’t know where they come from, or _why_. Why do they give her these clothes when they will only be destroyed later – have blood stain them, soak in water, be cut away from Skye.

     She wishes she could remember how long she’s been here.

***

Some time in the middle of the night, they drag Skye from her bed. She’s frogmarched down the hallway with vicelike grips on both of her arms and she doesn’t even care anymore. She drops her head and lets her hair fall down to cover her eyes.

     Her chest is aching again. Skye’s body doesn’t know that she’s been separated from her baby. In the first few days her breasts were swollen and heavy, but now it’s settled into an occasional dull ache. She hates the pain, because it makes her think about Hanna. How are they feeding her? Skye wanted to breastfeed her daughter for at least the first year of the little girl’s life, and now she’s worrying that Hanna might starve to death because no one on the plane remembers to buy formula.

     Well, no. That’s kind of an idiotic thought. Surely Jemma knows how to feed babies.

     Honestly, Skye can’t _believe_ how much she misses her team right now. She’d spent most of her life singing that she was a solo performer, not a team player, and yet here she is, moping because she’s spent a couple of days on her own.

     She shouldn’t be thinking about the team. Not now. Not before this.

     They drag Skye into the room and force her down onto the table, strap her arms and legs. Raina is the one who gently plugs the electrodes onto Skye’s temples. “It’s just a simulation,” she explains. “We want to see how you react.”

     Skye knows this is a lie. It isn’t a simulation – it’s a torture chamber, designed to stop her from knowing or understanding how much of her world is real. She can remember this now, but as soon as Raina flicks that switch-

***

“Come on,” Ward says. He grins and beckons and backs towards the window, and Skye laughs and follows him, almost against her will, because he’s got that flirty smile plastered across his face.

     “We should stay down here and watch the baby,” she objects.

     Ward steps closer to her, so that he towers over her, and slides his hands down to her waist. “Hanna’s asleep,” he promises. “Come with me.”

     Skye lets him take her hand and lead her out of the window, so that they’re standing on the narrow ledge outside. It’s not exactly a ledge where people are supposed to be standing, but Ward’s eyes are bright with the knowledge that he’s doing something forbidden.

     “Up we go,” he says, and he leans backwards at an angle that makes Skye lose her breath and points towards the fence that surrounds the rooftop garden above them. It’s not _their_ garden, which is why they don’t have the key to the roof door, but that doesn’t seem to stop Ward.

     “Don’t let me go,” Skye hisses, and she puts her bare foot on Ward’s thigh to hoist herself up. His hands grip firmly at her ribcage, slide down to hold her legs.

     “I’m not going to let you go,” he says, and then he gasps and laughs. “Stop it! Stop moving your toes!”

     “Really?”

     “I can’t help it if I’m ticklish!”

     Skye stretches her arms over her head and grabs hold of the bottom of the fence. She hauls herself up, Ward pushes, and then she steps on his head and leaps over the fence. “Okay,” she calls down softly.

     “You stood on my head,” Ward complains. He’s following her path, shimmying up the side of the wall as if he does this every day. Who knows? Maybe he does.

     “Your head was in a convenient location,” Skye says. “And it’s hard as rock, so it makes a good stepping stone.”

     Half over the fence, Ward pauses to put his face close to hers. Skye smiles, leans in, lets their foreheads touch.

     “I love you,” Ward says. His eyes are so close.

     “You’re just like Hanna,” Skye tells him. “Forehead-touching is her way of expressing deep emotion too. I expect you to grab my ears at any minute.”

     “Maybe I will,” Ward says, and he moves as if to lift his hands away from the fence, and Skye shrieks and laughs and pulls him over into the garden with her.

     It’s cold, the kind of crisp cold that makes the sky bright and the stars and moon brighter than normal. The air is clear and it burns Skye’s lungs in a way that she likes. Ward tugs her over to the middle of the garden, and then he sprawls on someone’s deck chair and pats his lap, smirking up at her.

     “This isn’t _ours_ ,” Skye says. “Hanna is going to grow up with parents in jail.”

     “I never get caught,” Ward objects, and he looks so pleased with himself that Skye sprawls down on his lap and kisses him, long and slow and messy. He brings his hands up to tangle in her hair, like he always does, and she puts one hand on his chest to hold herself up.

     “I miss you,” Skye murmurs into his mouth.

     Ward pushes her back a little bit, says, “What?”

     She shakes her head. She doesn’t know why she said it. “Kiss me.”

     “You’re always so demanding.”

     Skye swings her leg over so that she’s sitting right in Ward’s lap and says, “You love it.”

     “I do,” Ward says, and then he groans and adds, “Can we work on a sibling now?”

***

Garrett is leaning over Skye when she wakes up and she curls her lip in an automatic revulsion, because she’s just come out of a really graphic vision and his face is gross.

     “Your face is gross,” she tells him. That last one was nasty. She needs to ground herself back in reality – needs the sharp pain to bring herself out of her floaty fantasies.

     Sure enough, Garrett slaps her sharply, without even hesitating. Skye’s lip splits open, starts bleeding, and she licks over the blood and relishes the taste. This is real. Her blood is real, Garrett is real, the straps tying her to the table and bruising her wrists are real. Ward isn’t.

     “You’ve got a nasty tongue,” Garrett tells her. He leans close and smiles big and says, “I bet Ward likes it.”

     “Do you perv on my little visions?” Skye asks. “Or is that just Raina?”

     “I don’t need her machine to help me see into your head,” Garrett hisses. His tongue darts out, snakelike, to dab at the corners of his lips. His eyes are wild and rolling and she swears he is insane. She probably shouldn’t provoke him.

     “So you like to watch, then, Garrett? Jealousy, is it? When was the last time you got some?”

     His hand shoots out and circles her throat. “You know I won’t kill you,” he says. “I need you. But this – what we’ve been doing? This is just the tip of the iceberg. I can do much, much worse than this, Skye. Is that what you want?”

     Numbly, she shakes her head, chastising herself; stupid, _stupid!_ Don’t say anything else.

     Garrett laughs. “Smart girl,” he says, and then he releases her throat and walks away and Raina is there, leaning over Skye, her fingers cool on Skye’s face, helping her to sit up and giving her water.

     Raina’s manipulation is worse – so much worse. It’s hard to hate someone who consistently gives you nothing but kindness. Skye’s going to do her best, though. After all, she reasons, all she needs to do is give her team time. They’ll find her. They just need more _time_.


	2. Reality

It’s Jemma who flings open the door to her cell and ushers her out, saying, “Hurry, come on, hurry,” in a whisper.

     “Where’s Hanna?” Skye asks as she runs down the corridor.

     “We don’t have time to talk.”

     Skye shakes her head. She has to know. “Where’s Hanna?”

     Jemma casts an exasperated glance back over her shoulder, and she says, “Hanna is safe. She’s with May and Coulson.”

     “Where are Fitz and Trip?”

     The scientist stops running so abruptly that Skye bangs into her back. She turns around, slowly, takes hold of Skye’s shoulders and says, “Fitz and Trip are _dead_ , Skye.”

***

Skye wakes up.

     “You could show me,” Raina whispers, leaning in, her face close to Skye’s. “You could show me, just me, what you can do. This could all be over, Skye. You don’t have to go through that again.”

     Skye shakes her head. “I can’t do anything,” she mumbles through thick lips. She can taste the salt of her own tears; they’ve been running her through simulations like this for three hours.

     “Just try.”

     Raina thinks that this little ‘good cop bad cop’ routine she’s got going on with Garrett will break Skye. Raina is wrong. Skye shakes her head and presses her lips together and waits for the next one.

***

The judge’s gavel bangs sharply, and the woman says, “Custody is granted to Mr Ward,” in a high-pitched voice that grates on Skye’s ears.

     She says, “No, please, no,” but no one is listening to her, and then a bailiff reaches across the desk and lifts Hanna out of Skye’s arms. She screams and tries to grab for her daughter, her baby girl, but already the man is handing Hanna away.

     “Here you go, Grant,” he says cheerfully, and he turns and Skye sees his face and it’s Garrett, Garrett touching her child.

     “Thank you,” Ward smiles. He takes Hanna in his arms and looks down at her with an absent-minded little smile; as if he isn’t seeing a baby at all. “She’ll be my perfect little weapon…”

***

Skye wakes up.

     “I know this is hard for you,” Raina soothes. “You know what we need to hear.”

     “I don’t know where the team is,” Skye says dully. “Grant Ward is dead. I have never met Natasha Romanoff. I don’t know where my daughter is.”

     “Please don’t lie to me, Skye.”

     Skye closes her eyes and clenches her hand into a fist, letting her fingernails dig deeply into her palm. The pain helps to keep her focussed. She breathes deeply through her nose and concentrates on four statements. “I don’t know where the team is. Grant Ward is dead. I have never met Natasha Romanoff. I don’t know where my daughter is.”

     Raina strokes a gentle hand along Skye’s hair, down her face, rests it on her forehead. “There’s so much knowledge in there,” she murmurs. “I can see you’re hurting, Skye. Why don’t you just tell us? I can make all the pain go away.”

     Skye shuts her eyes.

***

“You’re being so brave, you know,” Ward says.

     She gapes at him. “What?” Something’s wrong. Something’s different.

     “You were always braver than me,” Ward tells her. “It amazes me, Skye. Don’t stop.”

     “Stop what?”

     He leans forward and rests his hand against her cheek, briefly. “Don’t stop being brave. You don’t have long to wait.”

***

“You passed out,” Garrett says as she opens her eyes. He’s still holding the knife, and it’s dripping red.

     “Sorry to spoil your fun,” Skye snaps at him.

     “Your team’s found us,” Garrett informs her, and Skye’s ears prick up. “We intercepted Agents May and Triplett outside the main gate. Fortunately – for me, not you – my guards took care of them.”

     “It’s sad,” Skye muses, “how you keep trying the same old tricks on me. Haven’t you learnt by now it’s not going to work?”

     “Oh Skye,” Garrett laughs, “it _always_ works.”

     Skye lifts one finger and crooks it, beckoning Garrett towards her. Inexorably, he is drawn. He leans down and she whispers, “You’re losing your touch, old man.”

     Garrett leans back, his eyes narrowed. He’s trying to hide his anger from her, but it’s not working, and Skye’s glad. She can’t help the strangled cry that escapes her when the man drags his knife down the back of her arm, from shoulder to wrist.

     “I always liked you,” he says to her. “I was honestly pleased that Ward fell for you, instead of that prissy English scientist or Coulson’s guard dog bitch.”

     “Funny,” Skye gasps out, “because I never liked you.”

     Garrett twirls the knife. “Remember how we had that conversation about not provoking me?”

     So she shuts her mouth and just watches as Garrett traces patterns across her skin.

***

Some of the cuts are so shallow that they’ve already started to heal by that evening, and they’re scabbing over and itching while Skye lies in her bed. Others are still bleeding through the bandages that Raina wrapped her in.

     It’s cold. Skye tugs the covers up to her chin and closes her eyes. Violent shivers chase up and down her body and she tucks her hands under her armpits.

     There’s a knock on the door.

     “What do you want?” Skye calls out.

     The person knocks again – more of a thump, really – and then abruptly the heavy concrete door explodes. Skye yelps and pulls the blankets up over her head.

     “Skye!” Ward exclaims.

     She moves the covers away from her face to stare at him. He’s standing in the door, dust in his hair and grime on his face, but he’s smiling a little bit, tipping the corners of his mouth up.

     “Ward?” Skye asks, and then she frowns, because no, this isn’t real, this isn’t right. “Go away.”

     Ward frowns, puzzled. “I’m here to rescue you,” he elaborates.

     “You’re not real,” Skye tells him. She feels a sob rise in her throat.

     “I am real,” he protests.

     “Tell me something that only you and I would know.”

     Ward frowns, drawing his eyebrows together. “Is this a test? Please just come with me, Skye. We’re in a hurry.”

     She doesn’t want to play along with Garrett’s game, but she rises to her feet and forces herself to walk over to Ward and then an idea strikes her. “Hit me.”

     “What?”

     “Hit me.”

     Ward makes a confused, miserable expression, but he pulls his hand into a fist and punches her in the shoulder. “Like that?”

     “Ow! No! I meant slap me. In the face.”

     “You didn’t say that,” Ward mutters anxiously, and then he slaps her. In the face.

     The pain sparks through Skye’s skin, a sharp, clean hurt, and she closes her eyes and draws in a breath. When she opens them, Ward is still there and her face is still aching. So is her shoulder, actually. That was a good punch. “Should I trust you?” she asks Ward.

     “Is there another option?” he returns coolly, and Skye smiles, impressed.

     “Touché,” and then she runs with him, down the hallway and through the maze of twisting, turning corridors that make up Hydra’s base.

     Ward slows and stops as he rounds a corner, and Skye bangs into him. “This way,” he corrects himself, and he grabs her hand and tugs her in a different direction.

     The door to the compound is open. It’s the first time Skye has ever seen it like that. Ward pulls her out with barely a hesitation and pushes her towards the bus – and yeah, that is the bus, stark black against the twilight sky. They run and Skye stumbles, goes down on one knee. Ward stops to help her.

     “Hold it!” someone hollers. “Hold it right there.”

     It’s Garrett. Skye recognises his voice without looking up and she feels her heart sink right down to her knees. Or maybe lower.

     “Who are you?” Ward asks the man.

     It’s the surprise that flits over Garrett’s face which makes Skye think that this is real. This has to be real. “It’s me, John,” he says. “Don’t play dumb with me now.”

     “We don’t have time for this,” Ward says, and, abruptly, he brings his gun up and fires it at Garrett – once, twice.

     “Holy-” Skye starts, but Ward yanks her to her feet.

     “Hurry.”

     She looks over her shoulder as they run, and she sees Garrett move. He sits up, and he yells – inarticulate, no words, just a howl of fury and pain. “You didn’t kill him,” she pants to Ward.

     “Coulson tells me not to kill people,” Ward says. “It’s wrong.”

     “You killed people before.”

     “Before,” Ward says thoughtfully, and then he adds, “You know, I keep meaning to ask people-”

     His voice cuts out with no warning. The world goes fuzzy.

***

Skye wakes up.

     She wants to scream. She’d been _so close_ , so _bloody_ close. She needs her team. She needs to get out of here. It’s dark and it’s cold and her mattress is unusually soft.

     Tremulously, out of the darkness, a voice says, “Skye?”

     Skye says, “Jemma?”

     Someone clicks on a lamp and the lounge of the bus is illuminated in soft yellow light. Skye starts to cry.


	3. Home

“You passed out,” Jemma is explaining. “Blood loss. And Ward, the idiot that he is, carried you into the lounge and let you bleed all over Coulson’s best sofa instead of putting you in the lab.”

     “Are you sure I’m really here?” Skye asks, but she’s pretty sure herself. Before, when she’d been trapped in the visions that they’d forced on her, she’d never been able to wonder if they were real. She’d just believed.

     “Of course you’re really here,” Jemma laughs, but the worry in her face betrays her tone. “Where else would you be?” There are shadows under her eyes.

     Quietly, Skye asks, “How long?”

     “Five weeks.”

     It’s like a punch to the gut. Skye closes her eyes and tries to breathe steadily before she opens them again. “Five _weeks_?!”

     “I’m so sorry, Skye.”

     Her brain kicks back into gear. “Hanna. Where’s Hanna.”

     At that, a beatific smile unfurls across Jemma’s face. “She’s fine. She’s safe; we kept her safe for you. I was going to go and get her, but I didn’t want to leave you until you were awake.” Jemma rises from her chair, says, “Wait here,” and moves away.

     Skye stares at the ceiling and tries to sort things out in her mind. _Five weeks._ Will Hanna even remember her? Do babies forget their mothers?

     Jemma comes back and in her arms is a baby that is _too big_ to be Hanna.

     “Oh my god,” Skye says. “Oh my god.” She struggles to sit up and holds out her arms and, gently, Jemma deposits Hanna into them.

     “Here she is.”

     Skye stares down at Hanna and Hanna smiles gummily back up at her. “Hi, baby,” Skye whispers. “Hi, Hanna. I missed you, Hanna.”

     Hanna beams even more broadly, as if she recognises her name.

     “She’s been fine,” Jemma says quickly, forestalling Skye’s questions. “We had some of that milk you expressed in the fridge for the first couple of days, and then I tried to figure out a way to synthesise it.”

     Skye frowns. “You didn’t just… buy formula?”

     “It was a challenge!” Jemma says, as if that explains it. Then she glances down. “Fitz bought formula.”

     Skye freezes. “Fitz?” How could she not have asked? “Fitz is okay?”

     “Of course he is!”

     “And Trip?”

     “He’s fine,” Jemma says, a hint of amusement in her tone. “Skye, what’s this about?”

     “I thought he was dead,” Skye says heavily, and then she corrects herself. “I thought they were _both_ dead.”

     “Oh.”

     “Yeah.”

     “Garrett?”

     “Yeah.”

     They sit in silence for a little while longer and Skye strokes Hanna’s chubby cheeks and smooth arms, touches her tiny toes. Jemma says, “I can fetch Fitz and Trip here, if you’d like.”

     “Are they asleep?”

     “Everyone’s asleep,” Jemma admits.

     “Then don’t worry about it,” Skye says. “How did you find me?”

     “It was difficult. That’s why it took us so long. We captured and interrogated countless Hydra operatives that Ward – the old Ward – had pointed us towards. It was… it was rough, Skye. I don’t know if any of us really slept over those five weeks.” Suddenly, Jemma is lunging forward and wrapping her arms around Skye’s shoulders, careful to avoid jogging Hanna, who is lying on Skye’s lap.

     “It’s okay, Jem,” Skye says. “I don’t blame any of you.”

     “I know,” Jemma sobs, “but I missed you _so much_!”

     “I missed you too. All of you. All the time.”

     Sniffling a little bit, the scientist pulls back. “If your milk flow has stopped, I can give you hormones to start it up again,” she says. “I don’t want this to hurt you and Hanna.”

     “Thanks,” Skye says, and yeah, she really is grateful. Breastfeeding was one of those things that felt special – sacred. Something between her and her child. She doesn’t mind the bottle-feeding, especially not if it stopped Hanna from starving, but she misses the way Hanna would look at her while she fed. She wants Hanna to remember who her mother is. “Should I head into my bunk, or something? Get some sleep?”

     “Ah,” Jemma says. “Yes. Well. Your bunk is… occupied.”

     “By Ward?” Skye had been afraid of this.

     “No,” Jemma tells her, “by Romanoff.” Skye gapes. Jemma shrugs. “We sort of had to get her back after we lost you. Like I said, it was a rough few weeks.”

***

The team congregates around Skye’s temporary bed in the morning – ridiculously early. There are hugs all around.

     “I wanted to come and say hi last night,” Fitz says, “but I fell asleep.” He looks sheepish.

     “I’m so glad you’re all right,” Skye tells him, and she hugs him again, hard.

     “The car crash wasn’t that bad,” Trip explains.

     “He’s lying. It was awful,” Fitz chips in.

     “Shut up, Fitz. It was fine, Skye. But we all sort of passed out-”

     “I think there was gas involved,” Jemma supplies helpfully.

     “-and when we woke up, you were gone.”

     “Right,” Fitz agrees. “So May did an epic cross-country sprint back to the bus-”

     “And she said to Ward and I that-”

     “She said there had been a car crash and everyone needed to look for you and so-”

     “We had to fly back to the car and then-”

     Skye holds up her hands. “Please shut up,” she begs. “Please.”

     Natasha laughs. “They’ve barely spoken the whole time you were away,” she says gently. “They have a lot to catch up on.”

     Coulson and May have been standing by, mostly silent. Skye glances over to them. “Are you guys okay?”

     May lifts her eyebrows in a way which suggests that Skye is foolish for even _asking_.

     “Right, yeah,” Skye mutters. “You’re always okay.”

     “We weren’t okay when you were gone,” Coulson tells her. “The past month has been a nightmare.”

     Skye holds Hanna closer to her chest. “For me, too,” she agrees.

     “It’s all over now, though!” Jemma exclaims, forcing as much cheer into her voice as it can possibly hold. “Skye is safe, and Hydra is… well, still Hydra-ing around, I guess.”

     “It’s not over yet,” Coulson says grimly. “For now, though, let’s go back to base.”

     “Wait. Base? We have a base now?”

     “We have a base,” May confirms, and she smirks, just a little bit, with half of her mouth.

     “It is the _coolest_ base,” Trip tells Skye.


	4. Snakes And Ladders

Koenig – the new Koenig – can’t stop staring at Hanna, which is fine, because Skye can’t stop staring at him.

     “He definitely died,” she hisses to Jemma.

     “I know,” Jemma returns equally quietly.

     “Like, he was for sure dead.”

     “I know.”

     Koenig frowns at the baby; looks up at Skye, and then back to the baby. “Does it need a lanyard?” he asks.

     “She.”

     “She what?”

     “The baby,” Jemma explains. “She’s a girl.”

     Koenig reaches up and scratches his ear, mouth twisted to the side. He says, “Huh,” and then he puts his hands in his pockets and scurries away.

     “He calls it the Playground,” Fitz tells Skye.

     “It’s a pretty accurate name, actually,” Trip agrees.

     The two scientists are flanking Skye as they walk across the hangar of the new base, with Trip trailing a couple of steps behind. It’s a huge, wide, white place, with lights dangling from the ceiling and a SHIELD logo spray-painted across the wall.

     “Why?” Skye asks. “Is there a sandpit?”

     Fitz glances over his shoulder and exchanges a conspiratorial look with Trip. “Better,” the two of them say simultaneously.

     “Wow. The bromance is really blossoming, guys,” Skye comments.

     Hanna squeals and wiggles her fists. Skye shifts the baby over to her left shoulder, feeling an ache like a bruise shoot through her chest as she moves. Hormones are playing havoc with her body right now, after the long separation from the baby and then Jemma’s treatments to make her milk come back in. It is driving Skye absolutely nuts – but, she thinks, touching her lips to Hanna’s fluffy dark hair and inhaling that sweet baby smell, it’s so worth it.

     “Tell me about it,” Jemma mutters. She points to the door at the end of the hangar and explains, “This leads into the main base.”

     There’s a sign beside the door which reminds agents to please put muddy boots and blood-stained clothing down the laundry chute. Skye laughs, imagining Koenig running around the base and pinning these notices on every entrance.

     “Who washes the clothes?” she asks, indicating it.

     “Not me,” Fitz says promptly. “I don’t touch washing machines any more, not after what happened when I was five.”

     “You’re refusing to do the laundry because of something that happened _over twenty years_ ago?” Skye asks. Jemma sighs and taps her forehead expressively.

     “The foam, Skye!” Fitz yelps. “Foam everywhere!”

     “You can probably drown in foam,” Trip says, backing the engineer up.

     “No you can’t,” Jemma says in an undertone. “Foam is porous.”

     “I was young! It was traumatic.”

     Skye lets Fitz hold the door open for her and walks through into the new base – and then she stands stock-still and just stares. They are standing on the lowest floor of what seems to be a gigantic circular beehive, or something. Above them are what look like balconies, solid floors around the edges of the circular room with sensible railings. Each circular balcony has one or two paths –bridges, really, jutting out into the wide open space that is the centre of the base. Some of the paths are on intercept courses, providing a quick and easy way to get from one side of the balcony to the other.

     Two transparent tubes spiral down from the top level to the bottom one, the one where Skye is standing now. There are ropes and ladders dangling from most of the balconies and the bridges and the roof of the base is made of glass, allowing a flood of natural light in which makes the whole base feel bright and open and welcoming.

     Skye is kind of speechless. Behind her, Fitz and Trip are sniggering, and then Fitz jogs her with his elbow and says, “You understand why Koenig calls it the playground, now, don’t you?”

     “Um, yeah,” Skye says. “Yeah, I kind of do.” She follows Trip out into the middle of the floor and then watches as he starts to scale a rope ladder. Fitz goes up after him, as nimble and deft as a monkey, and Skye pauses and looks at the baby in her arms. “How do I get up?”

     “Put Hanna down your shirt,” Trip calls. “That’s what I did.”

     “That doesn’t seem even remotely safe,” Skye grumbles. “Men!”

     “We’ll make her a sling,” Jemma decides.

     “Good idea.”

***

In the end, Skye ends up passing Hanna over to Trip, who tucks his shirt into his pants and slides the baby down so that she rests against his chest. He half-holds her with one arm while he climbs the rope ladder, and Skye follows closely behind him, fixing him with an eagle-eyed glare.

     Climbing that first ladder takes them up to a platform a good eight feet or so above the ground. It’s a place where three of the little bridges intersect, all pointing off to different sections of the first-floor balcony. From up here, Skye can see a very clear structural defect.

     “The bridges don’t have railings,” she points out. “Raising a baby here is going to _suck_.”

   “She’ll develop excellent balance,” Jemma offers.

     “Not if she tumbles to her death, she won’t,” Skye complains. She glances over at the Hanna-shaped lump that Trip is still clutching. “Can I have her back now, or do we have more ladders to climb?”

     “This is the first floor,” Trip explains, lifting Hanna up so that her head peeks out of the collar of his shirt. “It’s where the kitchens, labs and a few storage rooms are.” He points to various doors set into the wall around the edge of the first floor balcony. “The med lab, the hangar and the laundry are the only rooms on the bottom floor.”

     “Look,” Skye begins, “this design looks awfully spiffy and everything – but isn’t it ridiculously inconvenient?”

     “Well yeah,” Trip says, “but that’s kind of the point.” Skye tips her head to one side, inviting him to continue. He shrugs, and gestures at the chaos around them. “Well, if you were Hydra and you walked into this place, would you even have the first idea where to begin? The rooms where we spend the most time are on the fourth and fifth floors, so if anyone invades, we’ll have a birds-eye view of exactly where they are at any given moment.”

     “And we can drop boiling oil on them,” Fitz chimes in.

     “Exactly. Not to mention that all of the rope ladders really do wonders for physical conditioning.”

     “Ew. Specialists,” Skye banters. “They’re all the same.”

     They climb up again, to the second floor. Only two intersecting bridges form the platform here, and the ladder to the third level is dangling from a single bridge that simply ends in the middle of empty space. By this point, they are very high. Skye is eyeing Hanna and Trip with more concern.

     “Isn’t there a lift?” she asks.

     “Lifts are not secure enough for this place,” Jemma tells her. “Besides, apparently Fury just really doesn’t like them.”

     “Koenig,” Skye puffs as they haul themselves up to the fourth level. “He’s not the fittest of chaps. How the hell does he manage this every day?”

     “Well _I_ think he’s a robot,” Fitz says, “but that’s a personal view.”

     “Fitz, you think everyone is a robot.”

     “I do not, Jemma, I just think that everyone can be programmed. _Like_ a robot.”

     “You have to agree that there are some basic fundamental differences between humans and robots-”

     “Well of course, I’m not saying that they’re all the same, otherwise they would be called hubots or something-”

     “Anatomically humans are vastly superior-”

     “I think robots are superior, _actually_. If you think about it, they are at a tremendous advantage, because they have no exhaustion-”

     “-they have more smoothly jointed limbs, more sensitive skin-”

     “-no hunger, no thirst-”

     “-and robots are lacking vital components. They have no brain-”

     “-no pain, no greed-”

     “-no penis…”

     Abruptly, everyone falls silent. “No _what_?” Fitz stammers.

     Jemma flushes. “Why is everyone staring at me? It’s a simple anatomical fact that robots don’t have penises.”

     “I’m pretty sure the Terminator has a penis, Jem,” Skye chips in.

     “He might have a replica of one,” Jemma objects, “but is it fully functional? That’s what I’d like to know.”

     Trip holds up one of his hands, palm out, the other arm curled around Hanna. “Whoa, okay,” he says, in the kind of tone Skye imagines one might use to calm a panicking horse. “Let’s stop talking about penises now.”

     Skye and Jemma look at each other, then Skye says, “Why? We’re all adults.”

     “No, but, just, please,” Fitz stutters.

     “I don’t understand why you have more of a problem with talking about penises than I do, Fitz,” Jemma scolds. “You have one, after all.”

     “Seriously!” Trip yelps. “We need to stop with the penis talk!”

     “If I had a penis, I would seize every chance I had to brag about it,” Skye says helpfully. “I would also swordfight and write my name with pee in the snow.” Everyone looks at her. She shrugs. “What? You can’t tell me I’m the only one who’s ever wanted to do that stuff.”

     “Let’s just finish the tour,” Trip says, and Fitz, who is bright red, agrees hastily and scrambles to get to the next ladder.

     Their rooms are all on the fifth level, a row of doors set into the wall as it curves around. Skye’s room is set between Jemma’s and Natasha’s, which she appreciates. There’s a tiny little box at the end of the room which is a separate toilet, but for the rest of the bathroom amenities – shower, bath, sink large enough to fit Hanna in – she’s going to have to share. It doesn’t bother her too much, especially once she sees the bathroom and realises that the showers are all set into neat little cubicles. Hell, this room probably involves _less_ privacy invading than the single bathroom on the bus.

     There’s a lounge room on the fifth level, too. The door is set between the two rows of bedrooms – the side which Jemma, Skye, Natasha and May have claimed, and the other side, which has been given to the boys. Skye walks in and finds a large television set into the wall, a range of puffy sofas with excessive numbers of cushions, and a foosball table.

     “Score! Foosball!”

     “Don’t play with Romanoff,” Trip warns her. “She will kick your ass.”

     Skye also notices that someone has gone to the trouble of setting up a little baby area in the corner of the lounge for Hanna. There are blankets spread across the floor, rattles and teething rings and stuffed animals, and a low mobile hanging over the area.

     “This is gorgeous,” she says appreciatively, going over and crouching. She sits Hanna on her lab and offers the baby a rattle, cautiously.

     “It was May’s idea,” Jemma says, and Skye looks up at her in surprise. The scientist nods. “She actually knows a lot about babies.”

     Hanna reaches for the rattle and Skye puts it into the baby’s hand. “I… wouldn’t have expected that.” The rattling sound breaks through Skye’s concentration and she looks down at Hanna and beams. “Jemma, did you see that? She shook it! All by herself!”

     “You can leave her up here, if you want, and come explore the rest of the base,” Jemma offers. “Fitz will watch her.”

     Skye touches Hanna’s ear, gently. It’s so tiny, so perfect. “If it’s okay, Jem, I think I’ll stay with her a little bit longer,” she says.

     Jemma smiles sympathetically. “I understand,” she says. She rises to her feet and adds, “I’d better get to work on finding that sling, then. You’ll need a hands-free way to get Hanna around the Playground.”

     “Yeah,” Skye says wryly. “I definitely will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I sort of wanted to provide some kind of drawing of my envisioning of the Playground, but I am just SO BAD at drawing, even my appalling MS Paint version was no good. I can't wait until someone invents a form of mind-melding in which I can take the image from my head and put it straight into yours - but since that hasn't happened yet, you'll have to make do with your own imagination. Sorry! :D
> 
> The measurement from the ground floor to the first bridges is given in feet because Skye is the one narrating. It's about 2.4 metres, if you're Aussie like me. I actually could not conceieve a reasonable distance from a ground floor to a first level, so I ended up marching around my house with a tape measure and working out the average ceiling height. Let no one ever say I do things by halves.


	5. Birds And Bees

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this chapter satisfies all your Skyeward yearnings! I know Ward has been absent for a while, so I'm making up for it a little bit here. It's going to be a bit of emotional bonding among the team for a few chapters before drama kicks in, so enjoy it all!

“Skye,” Ward whispers, bending over her bed and touching her shoulder.

     Skye sits bolt upright. “Jesus H Christ,” she says.

     Ward frowns. “H?”

     “Yeah, I don’t know either. What are you doing in my room?” Skye flicks a glance to the bassinet, but Hanna is still lying there, eyes closed, smacking her lips in her sleep.

     Heavily, Ward sits down on the floor in front of her. He seems to fold from the tall giant towering over her into a short, cramped facsimile of a man. His face crumples. “I need to ask you something.”

     “And you had to do it in the middle of the night?” Skye looks at him curiously. He looks so unexpectedly small. “Go on, then.”

     “Is there something wrong with me?” Ward blurts out. He turns hopeful eyes to her face.

     “What do you mean?”

     It wasn’t the answer he was hoping for, because he curls his hands into fists and clutches at the sides of his black trousers. They’re baggy, and have a rather significant hole in the knee. It makes Ward look child-like and helpless. “People talk about ‘before’,” Ward says. “Like I was different ‘before’. I’m an adult, but I don’t know things that I should, and I barely remember my childhood. Doesn’t that seem weird to you?”

     “I think you know plenty of things,” Skye says carefully.

     “Sex!” he yelps.

     Reflexively, Skye looks at Hanna again. Then she shakes her head, ruefully. Her daughter is asleep, and certainly doesn’t understand what Ward is saying. “If I explained sex to you, would that make you feel better?”

     “Yes,” Ward says. “No. I don’t know.” He makes a hopeless, pitiful face. “I just want to know who I _am_ , Skye.”

     She sighs, and rubs a hand over her eyes. “You’re Grant Ward.”

     “Who is Grant Ward?” he counters.

     Skye takes a deep breath. “Ward. Are you sure you want to talk about this? Because what I can tell you – it’s bad.”

     “Not as bad as what I’m imagining,” he says honestly, and Skye remembers saying something along those lines to Coulson, once. Yes, Ward has the right to know.

     “You lost your memory,” she tells him.

     “Was it an accident?”

     “No. No, it was your choice.”

     “My _choice?_ Why would I choose something like that?!”

     “I don’t know!” Skye snaps at him, her face flushing with anger. She would love to know why Ward did this bloody stupid thing. “Maybe because you were bloody insane!”

     “You didn’t like me?” He’s gone straight from a righteous indignation to a crestfallen misery, and Skye wishes, not for the first time, that he didn’t seem so damn _innocent_ like this. She’d feel less guilty about hurting him.

     “Ward,” she says, tries to make herself sound calm, placating. “The thing is, you did some… some bad stuff.”

     “I was a bad guy,” he says slowly, and then he stares at her and there’s a flash of knowledge through his eyes. “I was Hydra.”

     She can’t deny him the truth. “You were.”

     “What made me change my mind?” he asks. “What made me come back here?”

     Skye has known this was coming. She’s known it for a long time – but she still doesn’t feel prepared. She swallows, hard, and casts her mind back. There was a moment, a brief moment, during Garrett’s torture when she’d passed out and dreamed about Ward. The real Ward; or, rather, the first Ward. The one that she’d known. The one that she’d had sex with in a janitor’s closet. He had told her she was brave. Skye is brave enough to do this. “Hanna,” she chokes out in a voice that isn’t really a voice at all.

     Ward says, “What?”

     “Hanna,” Skye tries again. “It was Hanna.”

     Confused, Ward looks over to the baby. “Hanna?”

     “Yes,” Skye says. She feels light-headed. “Hanna is your daughter.”

     “No,” Ward denies firmly, “she’s your daughter.”

     “She’s our daughter,” Skye says, and it’s the first time she’s ever said it, and it makes her feel… wrong. Guilty, unsure of her own emotions, unstable. Wrong.

     “Babies belong to two people?”

     Damn it, Fitz, Skye thinks. “You’re missing a lot of vital knowledge,” she tells Ward. “Here’s the lowdown. Sex is something that two people do together. If they do it in a certain way, it makes a baby.”

     “Sex makes babies,” Ward repeats dutifully, and then he gives her the shifty sideways eyes. “You and I had sex?”

     “Um. Yeah.”

     “But I can’t remember it?”

     “Obviously not.”

     “Oh.” Ward sits and digests that for a moment, and then he asks, “Was it fun?”

     Skye kind of feels like it’s unsuitable, to be discussing sex with Ward. She casts the feeling aside, reminds herself that he’s an adult and he was just carelessly mind-wiped, and then she nods. “Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty fun.”

     Ward still looks confused. Following an impulse that she can’t explain or quantify, Skye slides forward off the bed. She kneels on the floor opposite him, and then she leans in, putting one hand on the floor, and the other on his shoulder, and kisses him. It’s chaste – a peck, really, and then she pulls back and looks at Ward.

     “Oh,” he says dumbly.

     “You’re supposed to open your mouth,” Skye tells him. “Try again.”

     This time, the kiss is slow and wet and kind of fantastic, actually. Skye had forgotten how much fun kissing Ward was. She curls her fingers into the round edge of his shoulder and then he pulls back with a gasp.

     “I can’t breathe,” he stammers, and then he stares at her, eyes wide and dark and asks, “Was that sex?”

     Skye belly-laughs so hard that she falls over and curls into a ball on the floor. She shakes with mirth, tears stream from her eyes, and Ward watches solemnly. Eventually, Skye recovers enough to sit up. “No,” she says. “Sex is better.”

     “That was fun,” Ward offers tentatively. “Why did you do it?”

     “I don’t know,” Skye says. “Because it’s late and I’m tired.”

     “I thought you hated me,” Ward muses, “but maybe you just hated the old me. The Hydra me.”

     “I didn’t hate the old you,” Skye tells him. “Not at first. But… you betrayed me. You betrayed us – the whole team. After that, yeah, I kind of hated you.”

     “I’m sorry.”

     “I blamed you for it,” Skye says. She reaches forward again to touch his chest. “I mean, I blamed _this_ you. That was wrong. You’re different – I know that now.”

     “How do you know I’m different?” he asks. “What if I become Hydra again? I really don’t want to betray you, Skye.”

     “Then don’t.”

     “But what if I can’t help it?”

     Skye stares at his face, at his eyes. She holds his gaze. “You always have a choice, Ward,” she tells him firmly. “All you need to do is make the right choice.”

     “Thank you,” he says earnestly.

     “It’s okay.”

     For a little while, they just sit on the floor together. Hanna wakes up, and yawns, and fusses a little bit, so Skye reaches into the bassinet for the baby and pulls the little girl into her arms. It’s probably a feed Hanna wants – Skye tugs down the front of her pyjama top and puts the baby to the breast. Sure enough, Hanna latches on after a bit of coaxing. One of her little hands rests higher up Skye’s chest, clenching and unclenching as she feeds. Skye smiles at the tiny fist.

     “What are you doing?” Ward asks.

     “I’m feeding her,” Skye says. She looks up at him and smiles. “You really need a biology textbook.”

     “To learn about babies.”

     “Yeah.”

     “And sex.”

     “That too. They’re sort of connected.”

     Ward processes it. For a minute or two, there is silence except for the soft sounds of Hanna’s mouth.

     “Skye,” Ward says suddenly.

     She’d sort of been zoning out, lulled by the quiet and the dark of the room and probably the hormones, too. “Mmm?”

     “Can we have sex?”

     Skye snaps her eyes up to him. “What? Why?”

     Ward shrugs. “You said we’d done it before, and I want to remember.”

     “It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Skye tells him. “Just… I’ll work something out, okay? No more sex questions for while. You’re making the team feel awkward.”

     “Okay,” Ward agrees. “You’ll work something out, right?”

     “I will,” she tells him. Hanna is finishing up, so Skye tips the baby over her shoulder and waits for the inevitable spit-up. “Can you hand me that towel over there?”

     Ward passes it to her, and then, tentatively, he asks, “Can I hold Hanna?”

     “Sure, but she’ll spit milk on you,” Skye warns him.

     “It doesn’t matter. I just really want to hold her.”

     “You’ve held her before,” Skye points out as she shifts Hanna over into his arms.

     “It was different then,” Ward says. “I didn’t know that she was mine.”


	6. Ropes

“This is a ropes course,” Trip announces. It’s ridiculously-early-o’clock, and Skye, Fitz and Ward are gathered around in the top level of the Playground, watching Trip as he strides out to the middle of one of the bridges. “It’s going to work on upper body and core strength, and it’s also going to make your progress around the base much easier.”

     “Or,” Skye suggests, “we could go down the slides.”

     “You could do that,” Trip agrees, “but Romanoff is waiting down the bottom to beat you senseless.”

     “Oh.” Skye sits down on the bridge and leans forward to dangle her head off the edge. “Hello, Natasha!” she hollers down.

     The woman raises a hand and waves back.

     “Get up, Skye,” Trip sighs. “We’re going to start with a basic climb down to the next bridge.”

     They all swarm down the rope ladder. Trip manages easily, not having to look at his hands or feet, reaching the bottom in a matter of seconds. Ward handles the climb equally well, and Skye likes to think that she did okay. Fitz trips over his own feet and it’s only Trip’s quick action – reaching out and collaring him neatly before hauling him back onto the bridge – that keeps him upright.

     “It’s better than last time,” Fitz offers hopefully. Trip sighs.

     “It is better,” he agrees, “but really, Fitz, that’s not exactly something to be proud of. Last time you tangled your foot in the ladder and hung upside down for several minutes until we worked out how to free you.”

     Fitz glances at Skye. “That did happen,” he admits.

     “On the plus side,” Skye mutters, “you can’t get worse.”

     “All right,” Trip says, holding up both hands and obviously trying to regain control of the situation quickly. “Let’s try sliding down the plain rope next.”

     “What about rope burns?” Fitz objects.

     “The trick to moving down a rope is to go hand-over-hand,” Trip explains. “Watch me.” He winds the rope between his feet and starts swarming down steadily. At the end, he jumps off onto the closest bridge and then looks up towards them expectantly.

     Skye goes first. She skids a little bit when she’s close to the bottom, skinning her palms, and some previously undiscovered muscles along the sides of her calves and at the top of her legs start to ache almost immediately from the awkward position her legs are in, but she makes it to the bottom without incident.

     Fitz starts down behind her. He’s only halfway when he shifts awkwardly and calls, “My hands are sweaty!”

     “Just keep going,” Trip insists.

     “No, hang on,” Fitz says, and then, like an idiot, he lifts one hand from the rope and goes to wipe it on his shirt.

     It only takes seconds for disaster to strike. Fitz’s other hand, already slippery, loses its grip. His feet flail, struggling to hold him up, and then he falls straight down. There’s no time for anyone to react – Skye barely sees Fitz fall, it’s so fast.

     Ward, on the other hand, hurls himself down from the bridge above them. He catches the rope with one hand, Fitz’s arm with the other, and skids to a stop close to Skye and Trip.

     “Um,” Skye says. “Wow.” She and Trip reach out and haul Fitz onto the bridge.

     “Good reflexes,” Trip says, giving Ward an admiring glance.

     Fitz, sprawled on the floor, looks up at the taller man and pants, “Thanks, Ward.”

     Ward is actually looking kind of shocked too, like he hadn’t expected that to happen. Skye reaches out and takes hold of his arm with both hands, helping him step from the knot on the bottom of the rope over to the bridge, because the look on his face is scaring her. His hand is bleeding, she realises, where he’d scraped it along the rope so fast.

     “Trip?” she says. “I might take Ward down to medical.”

     “Good idea,” Trip says. “I might take Fitz up to solid ground.”

     Skye holds Ward’s bleeding hand, bites her lip as she thinks about the three rope ladders that remain between them and the med lab. “Hey, Ward,” she says, and she gestures to his trousers. “Hold still for a second.”

     “What are you doing?” Ward asks as Skye kneels in front of him.

     “I’m giving you shorts,” she says, and she digs her fingers into the hole in the knee of his cargo pants and rips the entire bottom half of the leg off. “There. Shorts.”

     “Oh,” Ward says numbly. “It’s only half shorts.”

     Skye takes the scrap of black fabric and binds it around Ward’s palm. “Come on.”

     He follows her down the remaining ladders, onto the solid ground of the first floor and then through the door into the med bay. Romanoff meets them there. She’s prepped disinfectant and a thick plaster already.

     Right before Skye starts to wash Ward’s graze, though, Romanoff takes her aside. “Ward was in my room last night,” she says in an undertone.

     “He was?”

     “I think he was looking for you,” Romanoff explains, “and I want to know if he found you.”

     Skye shrugs, nods, tries not to look sheepish. “He came into the room for a while, yeah,” she admits.

     Romanoff narrows her eyes. “Are you two sleeping together again?” she asks.

     “No!” Skye exclaims. She scowls. “It wouldn’t be any of your business if we were.”

     “Of course it’s my business, don’t be an idiot,” Romanoff says sharply. “It’s everyone’s business. Relationships like that complicate missions, do you understand? Especially with your history together.”

     Skye takes a deep breath and tries not to feel offended. She can see it from Romanoff’s point of view – she really can, she tells herself. “You’re right. I’m sorry. There’s nothing going on between us.”

     “All right,” Romanoff says easily. “He’s not exactly a forbidden fruit, Skye – I just want you to keep me or Coulson informed.”

     “Yeah. Sure. I get it.”

     The assassin presses her lips together tightly and leaves the med bay. Skye rolls her eyes and moves back towards Ward, rubbing the disinfectant over the skin of his palm before she presses the plaster across the graze. When his hand looks as healthy as ever, Skye rummages for a pair of scissors, which she uses to cut the other leg off his cargo pants.

     Ward stares at her the entire time, and when she’s done, he says, “Skye?”

     “Yeah?”

     “You fixed my pants.”

     “Well, yeah,” Skye laughs. “It wasn’t a super tricky solution, Ward. You just needed some creativity.”

     “Thank you,” he says solemnly. “Skye?”

     “Yeah?”

     “I think I maybe know why I chose to have my mind wiped.”

     She freezes, puts the scissors back in the drawer and turns to face him. “I’m listening.”

     “I think I did it so that we could be friends again,” Ward says. “I need you.”

     “You need me to be your friend?”

     “I think so,” Ward confirms, and then he frowns down at his hands. “I just need you.”

     “All right, big guy,” Skye says, patting his cheek. “Don’t start crying or anything.”


	7. Swimming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you go, have an extra long chapter, because I've made you wait for it! Sinusitis has been keeping me down, but no more! Antibiotics! Mwa ha ha ha.

The most infuriating thing about the Playground is that it has restricted Internet, and it is driving Skye absolutely nuts.

     “I’m going to kill Koenig,” she announces as she stomps into the lounge, Hanna on her hip. “Kill him again, I mean. I swear, that guy and his lanyards…”

     Jemma looks at her sympathetically. “I agree, your lanyard is taking rather a while,” the scientist says, and then she punches Skye in the shoulder.

     “Hey!” Skye yelps, shrinking back. “What was that for?”

     “Pinch and a punch for the first of the month!” Fitz calls cheerfully across the room.

     “I swear, you guys are like pre-schoolers,” Skye tells them both sternly. “Here, take Hanna. I’ve got a load for the laundry.” She thrusts Hanna into Jemma’s arms, adds, “Don’t _pinch_ her,” and hastens out of the lounge again.

     In actual fact, Skye had forgotten it was September already. In just a few short weeks, Hanna will be five months old. That’s nearly six months old, which is nearly a year old, which is really old! Basically, Skye’s starting to freak out that her baby is growing. Hanna’s much more alert now – she sits, she beams, and pokes her tongue out at Fitz and she can stand if people are holding her up. She’s also started to grow a thick tuft of blackish hair, making it look like she has some kind of fauxhawk. The rest of her hair is still downy fine and thin, but Skye knows enough to realise that this thicker hair is going to be everywhere soon.

     After collecting the laundry bag from her room, Skye lowers herself into one of the plastic tubes and lets herself go with a whoop. It takes almost sixty seconds to slide down to the ground floor, and Ward is waiting for her when she climbs out at the bottom.

     “I heard you coming,” he says, straight faced.

     Skye laughs. “I’m not surprised.” She lets Ward trail her into the laundry room, where she loads her clothes and Hanna’s into the machine and switches it on. “What’s up, Ward?”

     “We have a mission,” he says. Skye glances at him, startled, and Ward shrugs, makes a sheepish face, and puts his hands behind his back. “Coulson just told me.”

     “We, you and I?”

     “Yeah,” Ward nods. “Do you have a problem with it?”

     He’s been getting more confident, Skye realises, over the past couple of weeks. She isn’t sure if it’s a good thing, but it’s certainly a pleasant change from the wimpy, weedy man who’d been there before. “Nope,” she says stubbornly. “I don’t have a problem.”

     “Good,” Ward says, equally stubborn. “I don’t either.”    

     They eye each other suspiciously and then head off in different directions to get ready.

***

It’s not the bus that they take to the source of the trouble – instead, it’s a smaller, pointy-nosed jet that makes a noise like a bumblebee as it screams through the sky.

     Ward puts it on autopilot as they get close and emerges from the cockpit to get ready. Skye, who had dressed a couple of hours ago, leans against the wall and watches him shamelessly.

     “Your fly is undone,” she points out when Ward tugs his thin black shirt over his head.

     “Oh,” he says. “Right.” He zips it up, looks at her enquiringly. “Better?”

     “Depends,” Skye mutters, and then she flashes him a smile and says, “Pass me that vest.”

     He leans over to grab both vests, hands Skye hers and straps on his own. She puts hers on too – it fits more snugly now than it used to, tight across her chest where her breasts are swollen. Perks of motherhood, she thinks sarcastically, and shifts uncomfortably.

     “Are you okay?” Ward asks. He’s watching her, a little crease appearing between his eyebrows as he frowns.

     Skye nods, curtly. “You should get back in there,” she says, gesturing to the cockpit. “We must be close by now.”

     “Yeah, all right,” Ward says amicably, and he moves back into the front section of the jet.

     Skye sits down, fastens the two halves of her seatbelt together across her body in preparation for landing, and bends down to tie the laces on her combat boots.

     They’re not expecting too much trouble when they land, but Skye still feels her stomach tighten anxiously as they begin their descent. She hangs onto the straps at her shoulders, shaking with the movement of the plane, and tries to run over basic hand-to-hand techniques. Oh, god, why has she gone so long without serious training? This is a huge mistake.

     The jet shudders to a halt. A few moments later, Ward emerges from the cockpit. “All right, then,” he says, “are you ready?”

     “Absolutely,” Skye lies. She struggles to unbuckle her seatbelt. Her hands are shaking.

     “Here,” Ward says, and he leans over and does it for her. Skye bites down her embarrassment and forces herself to stand up, relatively calmly, and follow Ward out of the plane.

     They are right – there’s no one around. Skye stands tentatively on the solid concrete walkway that spans the edges of the water reservoir and swings her head from side to side, searching. Beside her, Ward is doing the same thing, his eyes scanning ceaselessly. Once he’s satisfied that they are indeed alone, he jerks his head sideways, gesturing for Skye to move around the edge in a counter-clockwise direction. He walks the other way, and she can’t deny that there’s a quickening in her pulse as she watches him vanish into the gloom. She hasn’t been back with the team for long enough to feel truly comfortable yet. Garrett and Raina still lurk behind her eyelids.

     It’s almost eerie, how quiet this place is. The roaring of water inside the reservoir quickly becomes background noise, but other than that there really is… nothing. It’s starting to freak Skye out. She hangs onto the front of her vest with both hands and puts each foot down carefully, not wanting to disturb the uncanny silence.

     Skye and Ward meet up again at the other side of the reservoir. Quietly, in a low voice, he asks her, “Nothing?”

     She confirms it. “Nothing.”

     “Hm,” Ward says. He’s frowning. “There were definitely multiple reports of sighting the beast in this area, spanning several weeks. I can’t understand why it’s gone now.”

     “Beast?” Skye can’t help asking. “I thought it was another one of the escaped criminals from the Fridge.”

     “Not everything in the Fridge was human, Skye,” Ward says briskly, and he sounds so much like his old self that Skye stops walking and stares at him. Ward stares back at her. “I-” he stammers, “I don’t really know much about the Fridge.”

     “You did,” Skye says quietly, and he shivers through his whole body and stares at her with something like horror in his eyes.

     “I don’t want…” he starts, and then stops and holds up a hand. “Skye.”

     “What?”

     “There’s something in the water.”

     Instantly, Skye whips around, her ponytail flying behind her. She can’t see anything in the darkness behind them, but Ward is already moving closer to the edge. There’s a rusty ladder close by, fastened to the inner wall of the reservoir, leading into the water, and he makes a beeline for that.

     “Ward,” Skye says, unreasonably terrified. “Wait.”

     He looks up at her. “It’s okay, I’ll just nip down and have a look,” he says sympathetically. He can see that she’s scared.

     Suddenly, Skye is furious. She didn’t want him to see that – she didn’t _ask_ him to try and understand what she’s feeling! He’s not allowed to witness her fear… it’s private… Ward doesn’t know anything.

     “No, I’ll go,” she contradicts him. She brushes past him before he can say another word and sets her feet on the third rung of the ladder, starting a steady climb down.

     It gets darker as she gets closer to the surface of the water. She can hear it plashing against the walls beneath her – should there be this many ripples in a reservoir? Is something _moving_ in here? Skye twists sharply to look behind her and, with a screeching, wrenching noise, the rusty old ladder breaks free of the wall and topples sharply away, falling rapidly into the water.

     Skye doesn’t know, later, why she couldn’t let go of the ladder. Maybe it was shock – right now, all she knows is that her hands are clenched so tightly around the rungs that she can’t let go, and she’s falling into the depths of what feels like a round concrete bowl. The water knocks all the air out of her lungs, and it’s cold, blisteringly cold. Her back hits the bottom hard and with surprising speed – the ladder is heavier than she’d expected.

     Move, Skye tells herself. You’re not doing any good lying down here. She fights to release the rungs, and then struggles to free herself, trapped beneath the ladder.

     The realisation comes slowly, in dribs and drabs. So, it’s a little bit tricky to move – her legs are pinned, one arm is trapped across her body, but her other arm is free. It won’t take long to push this ladder off… or maybe pull this ladder over… lift the ladder up?

     She’s stuck, and she’s already aching to breathe.

     Ward, she thinks, but shakes the thought away. He’s not coming. She can’t rely on him, she has to free herself. She shoves with her feet and the ladder moves an inch or two, scraping across the concrete bottom.

     There’s a swirl of bubbles above her and Skye freezes. Oh, god, what’s down here with them? What is it? There’s a flash of something dark above her head, propelling itself past in a blur of flippers and tentacles. Skye closes her eyes.

     Sharply, someone presses against her lips. Skye’s eyes snap open, she goes to struggle, and then she feels air. Someone’s breathing air into her mouth – or, more specifically, Ward is. He pulls away, frowns at her, and bubbles stream up away from them. He reaches for the ladder, but Skye shakes her head, bats his hands away and jerks her thumb towards the surface. She needs more air.

     He seems to get the message, because he pushes off sharply from the bottom and she sees that there’s a rope tied around his waist. The reservoir is only slightly more than half full, so it doesn’t take Ward long to return with a mouthful of air, which he tries to force into Skye. It’s awkward, and uncomfortable, and the seal of their mouths is not great, so precious air escapes and goes spiralling to the surface. Skye isn’t going to complain, though, not when she thinks this is keeping her alive.

     This time, Ward stays down for a little while, wrenching at the ladder. It shifts again, scraping across the ground. He gives up fast, though, goes back up for air and comes down again to give some to Skye. He makes three more rapid air trips before trying the ladder again. Skye’s pinned arm comes free – most of her torso is free, now. She struggles to push at the ladder with her own arms, helping Ward as best she can.

     It’s when he leaves to get more air that the creature returns. It’s all slimy, leathery black, spinning tentacles at its end and using its front flippers to propel it forward. One of the tentacles explores Skye’s face, and she shivers and tries to punch out at the creature, but it’s too far above her.

     Abruptly, it spins around and puts its face close to her own. It has whiskers, and fur, and huge dark eyes that glimmer with intelligence.

     Ward is back. He sees the creature, sees Skye, and takes instant stock of the situation. His hands shoot out and he grabs the thing around the neck.

     Skye would have screamed if she’d had any air left to do it. She flails her arms frantically, shakes her head, rolls her eyes, and still Ward doesn’t stop squeezing. The creature’s eyes are bugging out of its head. Desperately, Skye surges her whole upper body up towards the fight; her fingers touch Ward’s wrists and she tugs as hard as she can. He releases the thing almost immediately, although Skye thinks it’s mostly because her touch was unexpected. He ducks down, breathes into her again, and then frowns and gestures up towards the beast, which is circling them now, looking scared and unhappy.

     She can’t explain her actions to him from down here, so instead she shoves at the ladder again, and Ward tries to help. Truthfully, Skye is getting a little light-headed. Is that one creature circling above her, or two? When was the last time Ward gave her air? She thinks maybe she needs more, but he’s not moving towards the surface, he’s still forcing the ladder down her thighs, across her knees…

***

Skye opens her eyes and vomits all over the concrete ground that she’s lying on. It’s largely water, but she still feels sick as a dog, and then she throws up a few more times, sucking in air frantically between each.

     Eventually, she stops, shaky and weak. She stares up at Ward, who is sitting on his heels behind her, soaking wet, his eyelashes clumped together.

     “Ward,” she rasps.

     “Come on, come on,” he says frantically, “stand up, I’ll get you back to the jet, we’ve got oxygen and blankets.”

     “Did I die?” she asks.

     “No,” he tells her soothingly, “you were probably unconscious for a couple of minutes at most.”

     “Oh,” Skye says, and then she sits up and the world spins and she definitely sees something that still looks a lot like a mutated seal sitting nearby. “What is that thing?”

     Ward barely spares it a glance. “I think it’s some kind of cross-breeding experiment… seal and octopus, probably, with something else thrown in for that tough skin… it seems to like you, though…” he hauls her to her feet and drags her arm over his shoulders, wraps his arm around her waist. “I’m so sorry, Skye, this is all my fault.”

     “Don’t be s-sorry,” she gets out. She’s starting to shiver now as a bitterly cold wind knifes straight through her wet clothes. “I f-fell in, n-not y-you.”

     “I should have gone in,” Ward mutters distractedly. He seems distraught, and has not yet noticed that the creature is following them, moving with a strange, lolloping gait across the concrete. “I should have moved the ladder quicker, or something… or given you more air.”

     “It’s o-over,” Skye tells him. “L-let it g-go.”

     They reach the jet and stumble inside. Skye slumps instantly onto the closest seat, and Ward pulls blankets by the armful out of the overhead locker, dumping them on her head in his panic and then hopping from foot to foot frantically. “Are you warming up?”

     Skye grabs a blanket and wraps it around her shoulders. “Like this, you d-doofus,” she tells Ward, and he widens his eyes and starts draping the other blankets across her too.

     The octoseal traipses into the jet and barks at Skye, fixing her with that hyper-intelligent gaze again. Ward finally seems to have seen it, and he looks at it agitatedly before shrugging and closing the cargo bay anyway.

     “I’ll get us moving,” he says, moving towards the cockpit, “we’ll get straight back to the Playground-”

     “Wait,” Skye interrupts. “You need to warm up too, Ward. You’re soaking – you’re dripping everywhere.”

     Ward glances down and seems surprised to find himself standing in a puddle of water. “Oh,” he says.

     Skye pats the seat beside her invitingly and he sits slowly. She passes him a couple of her blankets. The octoseal shuffles closer and both of them stare at it. It hoots softly and scoots even further towards them, moving slowly and sneakily, as if it hopes they won’t notice. Eventually, it comes right up to them and puts its head on Skye’s knee with a happy sigh. Tentatively, she scratches above its eyes.

     “I think it’s part dog, honestly,” she says as the thing gives another happy sigh and tries to lick her face. Its tongue is absurdly long, and pale blue, which weirds Skye out a little bit – but the thing is also seriously loving on her right now, and it’s kind of adorable. She asks Ward, “Why did you try to kill it?”

     “The air,” he says, looking uncomfortable. “I thought you could breathe from its lungs.”

     They sit in silence for a moment. Skye tries not to dwell on the awful image of Ward ripping out a creature’s lungs through its skin right in front of her. She can’t quite stop herself thinking about it, though, and she looks over at Ward, wondering if he’s still a killer, deep inside. If he is really the kind of person who wouldn’t hesitate to butcher an innocent animal.

   He looks at her at the same time. Their eyes meet, and suddenly Skye feels uncomfortable, so she turns her gaze back to the creature now determinedly trying to climb into her lap.

     “D’you think Coulson will let me keep it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who genuinely wants to keep the octoseal? Vote now.


	8. Slipping

The octoseal, whom Skye has named Tessie, is sleeping quietly on the floor when Skye unbuckles her seatbelt and stands up, stretching out each arm and leg individually. She’s still cold and her clothes and hair are very wet, but they’ll reach the Playground in probably an hour or less, which is a comforting thought.

     Casting another glance at the sleeping animal, Skye makes her way forward into the cockpit. Ward is slumped in the pilot’s seat, looking exhausted, so she sits down beside him.

     “Hey,” she says.

     Ward shoots her a brief, distracted glance. His brow is furrowed, an expression which Skye has come to associate with deep thought. “Hi.”

     Skye runs her foot along the leg of the chair and looks at Ward while he looks out of the cockpit. His hair is sticking straight up on top of his head, spiky from the water and making him look like some kind of anime character. His wet shirt is plastered to his chest, outlining his pecs and his six pack and really, Skye tells herself, having sex with Ward in a moving plane while an octoseal sleeps in the next room would be a bad idea. It really would.

     There’s something about the hard lines of his frowning face and the memory of him struggling to free her from under the ladder that is making Skye feel all gooey inside, though. Maybe it’s hormones, she thinks, although isn’t breast-feeding supposed to nullify stuff like that?

     “Ward,” she says, and he turns towards her. Skye grabs the collar of his shirt in both hands and hauls him closer; he slips off his chair and kneels on the floor and she doesn’t really care because she’s lowering her head to kiss him, lifting a hand to run through his spiky hair.

     He pulls back, panting. “Why did you do that?”

   “I don’t know,” Skye says, “shut up.” She slips off the chair too, kisses him again and starts fumbling at the buttons of his shirt, eventually pushing the wet material off his shoulders.

     “My shirt,” Ward says, slightly puzzled.

     “Come on,” Skye tells him, “we have to be quick.”

     “Quick for what?”

     “Sex, you idiot,” she says.

     “Oh,” Ward says.

     “Do you want to have sex?”

     He hesitates for a fraction of a second and then says, “Yes!” with blazing joy in his face.

     “Enthusiasm,” Skye notes. “I like it.” She kisses him again and feels his fingers skimming through her hair. He’s always loved her hair. She doesn’t know if it makes her want to laugh or cry, so she just keeps kissing him and lets her mind switch off.

***

They’re both shivering again as they walk out of the jet, with Tessie the octoseal lolloping along beside Skye’s feet. Jemma is waiting at the door to the hangar, tapping her foot.

     “You’ve been ages!” she exclaims when she sees them. “We were all getting really worried!”

     “Skye nearly drowned,” Ward says without preamble. Skye rolls her eyes.

     “Skye!” Jemma yelps.

     “I’m fine, I promise, I’m just cold…”

     “Come on, quickly, let’s get both of you fresh clothes and a shower.” Jemma spots the octoseal. “What is that?”

     “I don’t want a shower,” Skye mutters, “I just want to see Hanna and sleep.” She glances down at the animal by her leg and adds, “Don’t let Coulson take Tessie away.”

     Jemma looks as if she might faint. “You named it Tessie?”

     She and Ward end up going into the laundry room, where they stand in the warmth created by the spinning machines and pull off their wet clothes for the second time in the past two hours and wring them out over the sink before hanging them up to dry.

     “Here,” Ward says, passing her a pair of sweatpants and a thick jumper. He goes to grab his cargo shorts, but Skye shakes her head.

     “Those are too cold,” she says, and hands him a pair of his long black trousers instead. “You need pants.”

     “Yeah, okay,” Ward mumbles.

     They don’t look at each other much as they both dress, but it’s not awkward, either. Skye wonders about this, briefly. She thinks maybe it’s because they resolved their sexual tension – but then maybe it’s also just that they are too cold and numb to feel uncomfortable right now.

     Skye makes the long climb up to the fifth floor with Ward following behind her. They pause at the top, and she mutters, “Well, goodnight.”

     “Night,” Ward says. His eyelids are already fluttering with exhaustion.

     Skye heads into her room and sees that Hanna isn’t there. Truthfully, though, she is beyond exhausted. She just sinks into the bed and closes her eyes. A few minutes later, when she’s in that delightfully warm place between sleeping and waking, she senses rather than sees Romanoff come in and lower Hanna gently into the bassinet.

***

Although Skye sleeps too deeply to hear it, the rest of the team inform her in the morning (with varying levels of politeness) that Tessie the octoseal spent the whole night crying loudly from the bottom floor. There are several suggestions about what exactly should be done to Tessie (with varying levels of violence) but Coulson is waiting with the creature when Skye arrives on the bottom floor and Tessie is rubbing her head against his ankle.

     “She’s sort of sweet, isn’t she?” he says to Skye.

     “Please say I can keep her,” Skye begs him.

     “Well she can’t exactly go back to the Fridge,” Coulson points out, “given that it’s still overrun with Hydra agents.”

     Skye beams and flings her arms around his neck. “Tessie might need a tank,” she says eventually when she lets go. “And we might have to find a way to bring her up to my room at night.”

     “You know she’s not a dog, Skye,” Coulson says very clearly. His eyes are fixed on Tessie’s tentacles, which are whirling with happiness at seeing Skye again.

     Skye crouches down to let the octoseal lick her face and she grins up at Coulson. “But I love her!” she protests.

     “Hm,” he says non-committedly. “We’ll see.”

     Since Skye is pretty sure that ‘we’ll see’ means ‘yes’, she doesn’t argue any further.

***

Skye is walking past the open door of the lounge with Hanna and a bag of clothes for the laundry chute when she hears Ward say, proudly, “I had sex.” He sounds incredibly pleased with himself.

     She can’t help pausing by the door, glancing in to where Ward, Trip and Fitz are squashed together on the sofa, playing Mario Kart. There’s silence for a few seconds, and then Fitz says, “Really?”

     “Yes,” Ward says in a rather superior tone. “I did.”

     After that, there are the sounds of muffled cheers, slaps on the back and enthusiastic congratulations.

     “How was it?” Trip asks.

     “Good,” Ward tells him, and then he adds, “but it was kind of wet.”

     Skye presses a fist to her mouth to stifle the snort of laughter. She’s pretty sure that Ward’s referring to their soaking clothes and her still-dripping hair, which plastered itself to both of their bodies, but judging from the stiff silence in the room, Triplett and Fitz are thinking of something very different.

     Finally, Trip says, “Oversharing.”

     “Bros do not discuss their sexual encounters with other bros,” Fitz agrees.

     Trip frowns. “Yes they do,” he objects.

   “No,” Fitz says, “that isn’t something that bros do.”

     “Maybe we just don’t do it because there isn’t anyone worth having sex with around here,” Trip argues.

     “Simmons is definitely worth having sex with!” Fitz says hotly, and then he goes bright red and says, “I didn’t mean it like that, not like that!” in an extremely high-pitched voice.

     “I don’t mean ‘not worth it’ in a _nasty_ way, Fitz,” Trip explains patiently, “I just meant that having sex with anyone on the team would seriously complicate our emotional and professional relationships, and I don’t think _that_ is worth it.”

     “Skye and I still have a good professional relationship,” Ward says indignantly.

     There’s another one of those pregnant pauses, and then Fitz says, “You had sex with _Skye_?”

     “Yes,” Ward says happily, “on the plane.”

     This time it’s Trip who yelps, “You had sex with Skye _after she nearly drowned_?”

     “Yes,” Ward says, and then there’s a blue explosion on the screen and both his go-kart and Triplett’s flip end over end, causing some very nasty swearing from Trip and a good portion of gloating and giggling from Fitz. Skye rolls her eyes and moves on, towards the laundry chute.

     Given that it’s now going to be impossible to keep what happened between her and Ward a secret, she thinks she should probably go and tell Romanoff. She knocks on the assassin’s door, but there’s no one in, and so she deposits Hanna in the little play area of the lounge (ignoring the stunned and slightly approving looks from Fitz and Trip) and heads down to the fourth level.

     After searching several rooms, she starts to think that they should really have an intercom in this place. Koenig pops out of a door as she opens it, so she suggests that to him, and he seems impressed.

   Romanoff is on the third floor, in one of the training rooms. She’s bench-pressing, which Skye thinks makes her look very impressive.

     “Hello,” she says nervously, wandering over.

     Romanoff sets the weight back on its bar and sits up. “Hello.”

     “You told me to tell you if I had sex with Ward,” Skye says, getting right into it.

     “Oh,” Romanoff says, and then she laughs. “I’m surprised it took you this long.”

     “Don’t be mean,” Skye grumbles. “We have a complex emotional relationship-”

     “-in which you both want to screw each other constantly,” Romanoff interrupts. “Yes, I noticed.” She pats Skye on the shoulder and says, “Look, you’re both adults and you have a kid together, so as long as it doesn’t complicate your missions, it shouldn’t be an issue.”

     “I’ll try and keep it professional away from the base,” Skye promises.

     “Anyway,” Natasha continues, “I’m glad you caught me now, because I’m leaving tomorrow.”

     “Again? No!”

     “This time it’s genuinely important,” the assassin says sympathetically. “I’d love to stay and help the new SHIELD team, but the guys were asking to see me – they’ve got stuff going on, you know how it is.”

     “The guys – the Avengers?”

     Natasha laughs and walks towards the door, turning to wink at Skye over her shoulder right before she leaves.

     Skye’s kind of amazed. When did this become her life? She’s unusually happy as she walks out of the door of the training room and heads down to the bottom floor to finish her laundry.

***

Skye wakes up.

     It’s a shock, a jolt, and at first she can’t register anything around her. She’s just seeing black in the gloom of the room around her.

     Raina’s face swims into focus above her and Skye screams. It’s a genuine scream, loud and sharp and scraping against the back of her throat. She can feel the straps now, tight around her body, and the sticky pressure of the electrodes on her head.

     “Oh god,” Skye says, “oh god please no, not that, not all of that…”

     “You have a powerful imagination, Skye,” Raina says, looking impressed. “That… what did you call it… sealtopus?”

     “You’re not real,” Skye whimpers, but she’s already sinking into despair.

     “It’s not me who is the illusion, Skye,” Raina says softly. She seems almost… sorry for Skye.

     “How long have I been here?” Skye asks dully.

     “In this room? Three hours.”

     “Here away from my team,” Skye insists.

     “Five days,” Raina says, and Skye feels another dull shock, because it must have been longer than that, it just must have been… “We’re expecting your team to arrive soon – well, what remains of your team,” Raina adds, “but it’s all right, we’ve prepared for their arrival.” Skye gets the distinct sense that the woman is enjoying this – enjoying the big reveal.

     “You’re sick,” she hisses. “You’re a monster.”

     “I am,” Raina says quietly. “So are you, Skye. We’re the same, you and I.”

     “We are _nothing_ like each other.”

     “You’ll find out,” Raina says softly. “You’ll see it all before long. That last simulation? It nearly broke you. I don’t expect it will take us much longer to crack your shell and learn what’s underneath.”

     “You’re trying to drive me insane,” Skye breathes.

     “Oh no, nothing that dramatic. It’s the pretence I’m trying to strip away. You see, I don’t even think you know why you’re doing it. Acting like you’re… _human_.”

     “I am human.”

     “Not for much longer,” Raina says smugly. “How many more simulations like that do you think you can take? Two? Three? You’ll crack. You’ll break, and I’ll see who you _really_ are.” She puts her face even closer to Skye’s and whispers, “By the time your team really _do_ get here, Skye, you’re going to kill them all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this fic is 'Dreaming'. If you didn't see that coming, you are a prune.
> 
> Just an epilogue left now! Nearly done! But I'm leaning STRONGLY towards another sequel. It just depends how bored you all are of this series... has it dragged on too long? Thoughts?


	9. Epilogue

Petrified, she lies on her back in the darkness, eyes wide, fists clenched. This isn’t… she can’t…

     The room is so quiet, Skye’s ears are singing with the silence of it. Her own breaths sound impossibly loud – she can’t hear anything beyond them, and the thumping of her heart in her chest and in her neck.

     Is this what having a panic attack feels like? It’s the disbelief, more than anything else, that is choking her; rising up in her throat and making her feel like she can’t… but she’s not… it’s not…

     Someone says, “Skye,” and she nearly screams, oh god, oh no, can’t they leave her alone, can’t they let her sleep?

     A sort of choked whimper escapes her throat, she wants to go back, she wants to imagine…

     “Skye,” they say again, and then she feels her mattress shift and dip as someone sits beside her.

     _No_ , Skye thinks, furious beyond anything she’s ever felt before. This is _not_ something she will let happen, not this, not now. She flails with her hands, kicks out with her legs, swings her fists wildly and feel them connect with something solid, someone’s jaw, but then he’s grabbing her wrists and pinning her arms to her chest and straddling her thighs, holding her legs still.

     “Stop it!”

     She bucks and twists and tries to break free.

     Ward yells, “ _Skye!”_ and puts his face close to hers.

   Skye’s chest is heaving, and the blood is pounding in her ears. She says, “Ward?” and feels the fight slip out of her.

     “It’s all right,” he says, “it’s okay, calm down, stop hitting me, you were only dreaming.”

     “Ward.”

     “Yeah, it’s me, just stop – ouch, your knee, move your knee.”

     Skye sits up so fast that her hair floats out around her face in a cloud for a second before falling to her shoulders. She stares at Ward, who has moved to sit on the edge of the mattress again now, and then she leans over and flicks on the light.

     It’s a dim light, a bedside light, but both Ward and Skye still screw up their eyes, and Hanna whines from her bassinet.

     “Hanna,” Skye murmurs, she’s trying to relax but it’s hard, it’s so hard.

     “Hold her,” Ward says. He picks Hanna up and hands her to Skye. His face is very pale.

     “I’m sorry I scared you,” Skye says. She clutches Hanna to her chest.

     “Everyone gets nightmares,” Ward replies sombrely.

     In the soft yellow light, Skye can see Ward’s sleeping bag illuminated on the floor of her room – a sleeping bag which Tessie the octoseal has apparently decided belongs to her in the current absence of its previous occupant. She doesn’t exactly remember why Ward decided to sleep in her room last night, but she’s glad.

     “I’ll feed Hanna,” she whispers, “now I’m up.”

     She tries, anyway, but Hanna doesn’t want to feed, she wants to sleep, and she grizzles and whinges and refuses to latch on until Skye gives up, puts the baby back to bed and turns the light off. In the darkness, she finds Ward’s hand.

     “Are you okay?” he asks.

     “I’ll get there,” Skye whispers. It’s hard, to realign herself with reality in the middle of the night like this, when her eyes are stinging and her eyelids are heavy. “I think Tessie’s climbed into your sleeping bag, though. Can you get in bed with me?”

     He slides under the covers without another word, lies on his back and doesn’t complain when Skye puts her head on his shoulder and wraps her arm over his chest.

     “Do you want to talk about it,” he asks, “or would that make it worse?”

     “I don’t know,” Skye says slowly. “It was about Raina and Garrett – that machine they had me in, which made me… see things. I thought maybe everything – maybe I’d never left Hydra. It was all just in my head. I’m honestly still afraid it all is.” She shudders. “I bloody hate dreams.”

     Ward tangles a hand in her hair. “That’s not something you should be afraid of,” he tells her seriously.

     “I can’t help it.”

     “But, Skye,” he murmurs, “everything is in your head. The whole world. Does it really matter what _other_ people say is reality? We shape our own perceptions. My world is different to yours – but does that make it any less real?”

     Skye rolls over, props her head up on an elbow, and stares at him – or, what she can see of him in the dark. “When did you get so philosophical?”

     “Probably when I lost all of my memories,” he deadpans. Skye giggles. “Really, though, Skye, it’s made me look at the world differently. If I don’t think that people create their own realities – their own worlds – then my life is just a pretty poor imitation, isn’t it? _I’m_ not real.”

     “You are real,” Skye says, stung.

     “I’m not the same real that I was before.” He’s made his point – his hand strokes over her back, fingers still twisted through her hair.

     “Some things are the same,” Skye says thoughtfully. “I did love you, before.”

     “Do you love me now, then?”

     “I’m not sure. But I can learn to love you.”

     “And I can learn to love Tessie the octoseal,” he says in a muffled voice, face pressed into her hair. “But we’re still not on sleeping-bag-sharing terms yet.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this fic is 'Dreaming'. If you didn't see THAT coming, you are a prune.
> 
> So, last night I wrote a really elaborate end chapter note in my head and, obviously, can't remember any of it now. Serves me right for meticulously planning what I'm going to say while lying in bed. Anyway, I am planning a sequel for this one, I'm thinking of setting it about four/five years in the future, but I'm also not sure because I do want to write bits of Hanna's childhood in-between... but I also feel like that would extend the series too much. So I think I'll stick to one more. :D


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